Monthly Archives: August 2017

A SNIPPET FROM the current work in progress to exposit the origin of Dolly’s nickname, Baby Troll.

Callsign: Baby Troll

The Gabrielle Dolly

When she and Aphrodite first arrived in Camp Meander via teleport, in September of ’97, the recruit company had been already a week into its training cycle. The dolly had, therefor, considerable catching up to do. She imagined and was subsequently told that there had been much debate as to whether it was wise to put her in such a position. It was seen by some as setting her up for failure. But Aphrodite was antsy and wanted her charge embarked on some activity — and meaningful activity at that; make-work was unacceptable. She asserted that the dolly would suffer far greater developmental damage from inactivity than from any possible failure. Further, she claimed, the dolly would not fail in any case.

An assessment with which the dolly was rather in greater agreement before she embarked on her training than she would be later on.

Until she got caught up, the dolly was subject to much harsh, no-nonsense treatment at the hands of the instructors, as she was always the last in her platoon at everything. Not only was she inexperienced and playing catchup, she was also smaller, lighter, and weaker than her platoon mates. Each new obstacle, each new task was to her a greater challenge than it would ever be to her comrades — even the billilaala, who were more her size.

It started the first day as she fell in on the parade ground with the rest and ended up at the wrong end of her rank. To be fair, they’d told her to line up according to height. Since everybody was taller than she, she figured it was mox nix — she’d always be the shortest and it made no never-mind which end she was on. She picked an end at random and took her position there. It was, however, a lapse which could not fail to attract the eye and ire of the lead instructor — Gunnery Sergeant Meru, a reputed martinet born in the Patkar Hills of Northern Burma and emigrant to the Canadian Rockies.

“What have we here?” the towering frekun ang said as she approached the dolly’s position at the wrong end of the rank. “Is this a baby Troll?”

Later, they would have better discipline, but it was early days, still, and the platoon had yet to learn better than to laugh.

“You lot think that’s funny, do you?” Meru asked in her very best parade ground voice. “Let’s see how funny you find it after a morning on the Main Loop. By squads. Double-time… HARCH!”

The Main Loop was a fifty-mile track that circumscribed most of the base. It was not paved. It was not level. It was cleared on occasion when NCOs thought some recruit unit needed to work on its brush-clearing skills. But otherwise, it was left alone, and the vegetation overgrew it with wild abandon. It was poorly marked. Passage through the woods just there was colloquially known as bush-whacking. It was held as an article of faith by all recruits that some alleged portions of the Loop existed only in the collective imaginations of the junior training NCOs, who accompanied trainee units on the route — and woe betide you if you mistook the trail. They might even send you back to start over. Independent Study, it was called.

For having been the cause of the platoon’s having to run the Loop — nobody ever walked the whole thing — the dolly caught holy Hell. She also earned a nickname from the experience. Nicknames were uncomfortable things to earn in Basic in the Troll Guard, so the instructors generally tried to find one for everybody — to spread the misery around evenly and find appropriate radio callsigns for everyone. The dolly’s was, from that day forth, Baby Troll. She’d be forever trying to live it down — until she learned to make it a badge of honor and accept it as her callsign. It’s worth noting that, once she’d made that accommodation with reality — as the Americans put it, once she’d embraced the suck — she was generally treated with greater respect.

WE SET OUT WITH A specific collection of goals — places we wanted to photograph on this trip: the new Edie Harper on the American Building, the new image of Rosemary Clooney (?) at Liberty & Pleasant Street, Central Fairmount School, and so-on.

As usual, our tendency to follow our noses once we got started sidetracked us almost immediately. Leaving the Bob Evans in Newport Shopping Center, where we had breakfast, Toni wanted to stop at a McDonald’s to get a cup of Diet Coke to sip on over the afternoon. I knew that there was a McDonald’s a block or two further out Monmouth street, so we headed there. Sitting in the drive-by lane, I was struck by the shape of a tree looming over the houses opposite.

It stands curbside between two houses on Linden Road which runs between Newport and Southgate, a gorgeous little neighborhood of funky craftsman houses mixed with early Victorian brick.

Rolling north on Monmouth, Toni spotted something and requested a detour. I don’t recall the exact sight that drew us aside, but we soon ended up circling (four or five times) the same blocks between Saratoga, Washington, Sixth and Ninth, with an occasional jog over to Monmouth. Along the way, the mural seen in my rearview mirror (above) caught my eye and we ended up circling blocks to get to within snapping distance of that.

Of course there are a lot of pix taken I’m not putting up here. I have plans for them, though. Toni has put up a bunch of what she took (including better shots of the mural above) on Facebook, so, if you’re her FB friend, you can check those out.

One of the cooler things that Cincinnati does is permit this group of artsy types, called Art Works, to paint murals on walls — buildings, retaining walls, you-name-it — to beautify the city. It’s been going on in one form or another since the ’70s, when the effort was called Urban Walls and there were a half-dozen of them all over downtown. Now there are hundreds, scattered over the whole city and in other cities as well. (There are a couple in Newport, for example.)

One of our famous families here, immigrants from a town upriver on the Kentucky side, are the Clooneys. Rosemary, Nick, and George. I’m pretty sure that this mural is meant to represent Rosemary, who was an icon in local TV and radio in the forties and fifties. It’s on the side of a building of railroad flats at the corner of Pleasant and Liberty Streets in the world-famous Over the Rhine.

Oh, and we did finally manage to get to one area I had as a goal for the day — Fairmount. The city is building out a project called the Lick Run Greenway between Queen City and Westwood avenues from State/Beekman out almost to Wyoming where it comes north down from Price Hill. I had noticed in Lyft trips through the area that there was rapid demolition being done and that, if the picturesque scenes were to be captured before they’re all gone, we’d have to get out there toot sweet. It’s not an area I suspect anybody is nostalgic about. For as long as I can remember, it’s been a low-rent dump, blighted, benighted, and all that, which is why the city is tearing it down and building a monument to the politicians spending our tax dollars on it. No doubt, it will be pretty.

There are a few gems being lost in the process. The old St. Francis Hospital, (featured a week or so ago on this blog), being one. Another is a bit of a surprise, nestled on a hillside alongside vertiginous White Street — Central Fairmount School. Which, as far as I know, is to be abandoned or torn down, unlike many of its contemporaries elsewhere in the city.

SOME FORTY-ODD years ago, the Park Board blew out the south wall of the reservoir in Eden Park and built a new reflecting pool atop it, providing the park’s users with a bilevel play field. In the time since, the upper level has been used mostly for quotidian recreation — frisbee throws, dog chases, et al and fairs and festivals, while the lower level is used a a baseball diamond, basketball court, and so-forth, while the top of the wall itself is used as a place for romantic walks and imaginary lovers’ leaps. (Never heard of the last, but it could be done.).

(Click to embiggen.)

I’ve always thought this to be a subject best treated in grayscale, thus the utterly desaturated tones.

THIS ONE CAUGHT MY EYE while I was on a ride with passenger. And, for the first time ever, I circled back around after I dropped her off and went to where I could get the shot.

The building is in the South Avondale neighborhood of Cincinnati, right by Walnut Hills and Corryville, at the corner of Union Street and Reading Road. I took the shot from my car while standing on Bowman Terrace, a block away. Minimal color processing in Photoshop.

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